The Quarantine Cook: Easy Honey Chilli Chicken

Hey folks, welcome to the first recipe in the Quarantine Cook series. This is where I (Jon) attempt to cook things and make them look fairly edible. I do not claim to be a chef or even a half decent cook. My normal weekly menu is easy stuff like Fajitas, carbanara and other Prepackaged foods. However i feel this lock down is a good enough excuse to try out new recipes. Don’t worry, all the recipes posted on here have been tested and eaten by myself and Hannah. So as long as you follow my “expert” steps you should end up with something that can pass as food. Hopefully you enjoy this and give these recipes a go as I promise they are amazing.

Do you like chicken? Do you like honey? Do you like chilli? Then this mixture of all three will hopefully send those taste buds crazy. This easy to do recipe has been a weekly fixture in the Gathfords menu since we discovered it a few weeks ago. Add some rice and you have a wonderful meal.

Makes 2 (large) servings

Ingredients

6 boneless & skinless chicken thighs

2 – 3 tbsp runny honey (depending on how sweet you want it)

pinch of dried chilli flakes

2 chicken stock cubes, crumbled

3 tbsp dark soy sauce

1 1/2 tsp garlic granules

To Serve

200g basmati / long grain rice

mixed vegetables (your choice: go crazy)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180℃ (160℃ fan) and get a large-ish oven proof dish to put your chicken in

2. Now it is time to make the sauce/marinade/horrible looking dark brown liquid. Fair warning before you do this. The sauce will look absolute terrible when you mix all the ingredients together. I genuinely thought I had done something wrong, but I promise you it will taste amazing when it is cooked!

Put honey into a bowl and then give it an extra cheeky pour because you doubt that is enough honey. Add the dark soy sauce (smells terrible) and the garlic granules (or, because I couldn’t find this, I used garlic powder as I assume its the same stuff). Now you have the fun task of “crumbling” the chicken stock cubes. Turns out these don’t really crumble, they tend to turn into a weird mush. So break the stock cubes into smaller weird mushes and pretend everything is going okay. Finally add a pinch of dried chilli flakes. Mix this all together with a fork until you end up with a concoction looking like this.

3. Place all your chicken thighs into an oven proof dish and poor your sauce over all the chicken. Don’t be a wimp, get your hands (hopefully washed and clean) in there to rub the sauce over all the thighs. Open up the thighs and get some sauce on the bottom of the chicken as well as the top. This is where I thought “ah that cannot be enough chilli” and sprinkled some more on top of the drenched chicken. if you like things with a bit more kick then add more chilli flakes, but it doesn’t necessarily need it.

4. Place the dish with the chicken (that bit is key) into your preheated oven and cook for 25-30 minutes. I tend to go for 30 minutes because our oven likes to play the “lets not stay at temperature” game. After 25-30 minutes the chicken should look lovely and coloured and obviously not have any pink in the middle. While this is cooking prepare rice (I used basmati) and veg to go with the chicken.

5. Time to dish up. Pick out the chicken thighs from the dish making sure you keep the remaining sauce to one side. Pour the remaining sauce onto the rice, mixing it around for a while so your rice gets nice and juicy. This makes the rice taste so good! Now mix the veg into the rice. I’m told as I am technically an adult I have to have veg. I dispute this, but Hannah tends to win. Then finish plating up by putting the rice on the plate.

6. Sit down and enjoy your meal. I would try and give you advice on what wine to have or some other nonsense like that. However, I have no clue about any of that. A beer goes well with it, as does squash, juice or fizzy pop. Basically: hydrate kids.